End of an Era

Many moons ago, back when I started university, I bought for myself a CD/cassette/radio player. This was allegedly portable, but the sheer size of the thing made a mockery of that claim. But that was fine, since I never really wanted it for that purpose.

And it's done me sterling service in the past twenty-two years, and most especially in the last seven when it has sat atop our fridge and provided music in the kitchen. But it had certainly started to show its age - the radio reception was patchy at best, even with the aerial extended (and that aerial was also becoming increasingly fragile), and there appeared to be a loose connection somewhere - in CD mode it sometimes managed playback through both speakers, sometimes through only one, and sometimes none at all. (And this wasn't a "have you tried turning it off and on again" problem - the loose connection would move around, such that audio would come and go.)

So it was finally time for a replacement, and so yesterday I went and purchased a new, much smaller, CD/radio/other player. Which is considerably better since the radio is digital and so has better reception, the system has actual presets, which means we can change the channel without risk that we'll never ever be able to find our way back (you wouldn't think that would be an issue, but...), and the CD player actually works. Plus, it also has the ability to play back from both SD cards and USB keys, which is certainly nice to have. The only real downside, and it is a pain, is that the whole thing isn't wireless - I'm increasingly of the opinion that if we're going to have an "internet of things" then we really should get on with it! (But the wireless ones were vastly more expensive for no huge gain, so...)

But this does mean that we are now, finally, and for the first time, completely without the ability to playback cassettes. Granted, we haven't wanted to do so for some years, and I'm not even sure we even have cassettes left, and besides cassettes are long obsolete (of course, that's also true of CDs, DVDs, and even Blu-rays), but still...

Anyway, that was the big excitement of last night.